To celebrate the 20th anniversary of the masterpiece GTA San Andreas, one of the game's developers has released what the map should have looked like.
A GOAT turns 20. GTA San Andreas celebrates its birthday on October 26, 2024, and one of the developers has now leaked what the maps should have looked like. Looking back on the game and its amazing map, we're pretty happy about the changes!
Former Rockstar employee Obbe Vermeij reflected on his time at Rockstar Studios and his work on Grand Theft Auto San Andreas. In particular, his tweet about the map design went viral. During development, there was no plan to create a single large map like the one we know and love today. In fact, the plan was to create three smaller maps that would be connected by a fast travel system. Not only would this have been technically easier, but it would have made the design of the maps easier as well.
It would also make it easier to have different police/ambulance/firetrucks for each city. Different pickups, weather types etc.
Even though it ended up being a large map, the tweet shows that there were still some ideas that made it into the final version. While the map ended up being one big map, there are still different city-specific pickups, police cars, and weather.
20 years ago we released Grand Theft Auto - San Andreas.The original plan was for the 3 cities to be on separate maps. The player would travel between the cities using trains and planes.(Gta 1 and 2 also had three cities on separate maps)Memory was very tight on the ps2 and... pic.twitter.com/kUMxR9Kt96
— Obbe Vermeij (@ObbeVermeij) October 25, 2024
He looked back not only on the development, but also on the launch of the game. Especially the midnight launches were a big event back then and made Obbe Vermeij nostalgic.
We released gta San Andreas 20 years ago. October 26, 2004.Game releases were different back then.It took 6 weeks for the DVDs to be produced, boxed and distributed. Patches over the internet were not yet a thing.For us, all of the stress had happened at the cut-off point, 6... pic.twitter.com/SXKI6uz93K
— Obbe Vermeij (@ObbeVermeij) October 26, 2024
Obbe Vermeij may have moved on from Rockstar Games, but he still enjoys playing their games. In fact, he's stated in the comments that he is pretty hyped about GTA VI!